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Author
Topic: Side Effects Of Truvada/Isentress??? (Read 3099 times)

Hi all, I was diagnosed 5 months ago with a CD4 count of 300. I swiftly started treatment and truvada/isentress was prescribed by my doc as this combo was supposed to have little or no side effects, seeing as i operate heavy machinery on a daily basis. I was living abroad when diagnosed and it came as a massive shock. I felt very alone and isolated and drank very heavily of an evening to try n numb my brain i guess.... i dont really know why... but thats how i dealt with it initially. After 2 months of wreckin myself i decided to fly home(UK) in hope of finding some motivation to 'care' again and sort myself out. Thankfully this has been a good move as i am now a lot more positive being around friends and family and am into month 3 with no booze and no cigarettes!!! Anyways, i had completed one month of meds before i left and the results were great. VL went down from 6000 to <20 in 4 weeks. But since stopping the drinking i have Really struggled to sleep. I expected this for a few weeks seeing as i was drinking myself to sleep previously... but it has got worse as the weeks have turned into months. I suffer from really restless sleep with such vivid dreams often about work!?(Sad i know!!!) They are so life-like that i wake up feeling that iv already done a days work before iv stood up!! I am beginning to think this could be a side effect of the meds and all the drinking was masking it as i was drunk going to bed and feeling 'hungover' when i got up the next day. I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar off the truvada/isentress combo?? Its just so hard to get up and go at the moment... i was kinda hoping someone might be able to tell me it goes away after a while!!!!! lol. Thanks for reading and any feedback will be much appreciated!

Insomnia is a known side effect of Isentress. Discuss with your doctor if it becomes too bothersome. There are other medications with little/no side effects that you could take or you may try a sleep aid recommended by your doctor.

I'm on Isentress and the major side effect listed on their site is a 4% rate of "disturbed sleep" -- mine is similar to yours in that it's not so much nightmares with scary snakes or anything, but intense scenarios that I call, for lack of a better description, "crisis dreams". They're benign up to a point, but then at some point there's a crisis of some sorts and I actually have to wake up, get out of bed, and force myself to urinate. Then I go back to bed and sleep fine.

I'll also add that this doesn't happen every night, but it does happen perhaps once a week. And it's worse if I'm having anxiety about something. So I suppose it could be a combination of anxiety and medication side effect. It's hard to discern such things often, but since it's a known side effect it would make sense for you to try another regimen -- and you'd only be switching out the Isentress for something else, and staying on Truvada. If you still have sleep issues after say a month on the new medication you can probably assume you have excessive anxiety causing sleep issues.

I am the same regimen the but never had any problems with sleep. But I am also prone to low blood pressure, so I fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed. But I noticed, I have some spots on my skin. They appear in different places of my chest and back. I put the cream, and it helps but another spot shows up in another place... Is it a side effect too?